


AU

by jeunesse



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9286094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeunesse/pseuds/jeunesse
Summary: “Then, I suppose there’s a universe where the two of us are equally normal, talking in the same classroom about nothing in particular.”Normal banter in a normal life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I only had time for something short, but happy birthday Eichi!

“Stop smiling.”

“Was I?” Eichi asks, moving his hand to feel the shape of his cheeks, and Keito frowns with a furrowed brow.

“Don’t move.”

Eichi puts his hands back down, neatly poised against his lap, but smiles again with a teasing angle to his lips. Keito taps his pencil against the easel and gives him a stern look—a knowing exchange filled with years of cleaning up disaster after disaster Eichi left behind in his wake.

“Keito—”

“Just,” he sighs, “don’t open your mouth too much.”

“Alright. Keito, do you know about the multiverse theory?”

“The...what?” His pencil stops an inch away from the paper. “Why all of a sudden?”

“Do you ever wonder what another you is doing? How, right at this very moment, there’s a universe where you have gym instead of art, where you’re playing baseball outside and I’m sketching someone else’s portrait?”

Keito snorts. “A universe where _you_ can draw?”

“That’s mean,” Eichi says lightly. “I didn’t say anything about how you being athletic is unrealistic.”

Keito jerks his hand across the paper and says in a deadpan, “Ah, I guess you have a moustache now.”

“Hm? Do I look handsome with one?” Eichi starts to stand from his seat only to meet the sharp end of a pencil pointed in between his eyes.

“Sit.”

“Alright.”

The chair creaks as Eichi rests his weight against the seat, and the faint scratching of pencil on paper melds with the other pencil scratches and light chatter floating in the room.

“Stop fidgeting. Why are you so restless? You’re not a five year old anymore.”

“Was I?” Eichi asks with an airy detachment. “You know, Keito, in another universe I probably have a moustache. I’m all muscly, too.”

Keito’s eyes narrow at him from behind the easel. “I never want to imagine that again.”

Eichi laughs quietly, his shoulders shaking with the effort to smother the noise. “Then, how about this. In another universe, you’re just an average student. You’re not particularly smart, you’re not in student council, you’re not an idol. Oh, but if you’re average then your athletic ability is a little higher than it is now.”

He ducks on instinct as an eraser flies right over his head.

“You go to a normal school,” he continues, “you have a normal family. A normal, peaceful life.”

Keito remains silent as he drags his pencil back and forth almost lazily. “And? What’s the point?”

Eichi sinks back further into his chair and takes in Keito’s rigidness belying his nonchalance—a seriousness in the sharp edges of his form and the attentiveness in the angle of his body, facing Eichi’s in an open, forward manner.

“We don’t meet in that life.”

A small clatter of pencil against floor echoes in his ears, and Keito smoothly leans down to pick it up without missing a beat.

“Stop smiling.”

“Alright.”

This time, Eichi complies and lets the sounds of the classroom take over conversation. They sound distant as if coming through a glass wall, as if an expanse of space stretches between him and the rest. On the other side, Sagami indolently tells Chiaki to stop posing on top of his chair. Kaoru whistles and Izumi tsks.

And this time, Keito breaks their silence. “A world where we don’t meet doesn’t sound bad. Maybe I can get a full night’s worth of sleep in that universe.” He goes on when Eichi remains still and makes no move to reply. “What about you? What do you do in that universe?”

“I’m dead,” Eichi says immediately, cheerfully, pouncing on the opportunity given to him like a kitten with a ball of yarn.

Keito lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I prefer you with a moustache.”

“I wonder how many universes I’ve died in,” Eichi continues as if he hadn’t heard Keito. He looks out a window almost wistfully. “Maybe I’ll die tomorrow and add this universe to the list of dead me’s.”

“You idiot,” Keito says. “Stop being melodramatic. Of course you’ve died in other universes, just as many times I’ve died, or anyone else has. Do you think you’re the only one going to die? That you’re the first and the last? Don’t make these kind of jokes.”

Eichi inhales, a deep breath. “As expected of my cute angel, it feels like I’m being scolded by some divinity.”

“Call me cute one more time and I’m adding a beard to your moustache.”

“Yes.”

“And for the record,” Keito says, pushing his glasses up with more force than necessary, “while I sometimes think meeting you was a mistake, it’s not something I regret.”

It’s only when Keito looks up from his paper, eyes locking with his, that Eichi laughs—a brief, instantaneous sound several seconds too late.

“Then, I suppose there’s a universe where the two of us are equally normal, talking in the same classroom about nothing in particular.”

“It can’t be this universe. You’re the farthest thing from normal.”

“Neither are you.”

Keito retreats behind his paper once more, resigned and tired. “Stop smiling.”

“Am I?” Eichi asks, and smiles wider.


End file.
